Context, not compromise

Not a good exam­ple of contextualization.

At his blog, It Is Writ­ten, Dr. Bob Gon­za­les has put together an excel­lent series on con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion – a manda­tory tenet of mis­sional churches and the bête noire of John MacArthur — or what can bet­ter be described as “accommodation.”

In his lat­est install­ment, Gon­za­les help­fully reminds us:

[W]e need to accom­mo­date our com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the peo­ple we’re try­ing to reach, to the peo­ple we’re try­ing to edify because God accom­mo­dates him­self to us in his rev­e­la­tion and because the ser­vants of God, like Jesus and like Paul the apos­tle, accom­mo­dated their com­mu­ni­ca­tion to their audi­ence. Broth­ers, if we want to win souls, if we want to see our churches grow, if we want to increase the edi­fi­ca­tion of our cur­rent mem­ber­ship, then we must become all things to all men. We must accom­mo­date (not com­pro­mise) in the area of communication.

Indeed, con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion prop­erly defined and prop­erly done doesn’t water down the gospel; it makes the offense of the gospel as clear as possible.